I’m also worried at a new trend: I rarely see Google
employees wearing theirs anymore. Most say “I just don’t like
advertising that I work for Google.” I understand that. Quite a
few people assume I work for Google when they see me with mine. I
just hope it doesn’t mean that Google’s average employee won’t
support it. That is really what killed the tablet PC efforts
inside Microsoft until Apple forced them to react due to
popularity of iPad.

If Google employees aren't
willing to be trailblazers, then who will?

Glass is Google's computerized lens. It generated a lot of buzz
in the first half of 2013, but the hype has died down.

There's a good chance that Glass is a fundamentally flawed
product.

The premise of Google Glass is that you can easily get emails and
texts without having to rudely pull your phone out of your
pocket. The idea is that our smartphones are making us distracted
and we're missing big moments.

But Glass is considered weird and rude. In an excellent essay on
wearing Glass for a year, Wired's Mat Honan says:

"My Glass experiences have left me a little wary of
wearables because I’m never sure where they’re welcome. I’m not
wearing my $1,500 face computer on public transit where there’s a
good chance it might be yanked from my face. I won’t wear it out
to dinner, because it seems as rude as holding a phone in my hand
during a meal. I won’t wear it to a bar. I won’t wear it to a
movie. I can’t wear it to the playground or my kid’s school
because sometimes it scares children."

And he's a big fan of Glass!

If people like Honan and Google employees don't feel comfortable
wearing Glass in public, then it's never going to become a normal
thing. Those people need to wear them enough for the world to get
used to Glass. If they're scared to wear them, then it remains a
niche product.

And if it's a niche, alienating product then people won't wear
them in public. And so, it will never gain mainstream
acceptance.

We saw this Scoble quote on
John Gruber's Daring Fireball. His take is fairly
succinct: "When your own employees don’t use or
support your product, the problem is with the product, not the
employees."

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